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www.postmagazine.com 6 POST OCTOBER 2017 BITS & PIECES TECHNICOLOR FINISHES TULIP FEVER WITH BASELIGHT LONDON — Technicolor (www.tech- nicolor.com) in London has com- pleted the finishing on Tulip Fever, a romantic period drama from The Weinstein Company and direct- ed by Justin Chadwick. As well as performing the grade, conform and deliverables, Jean-Clément Soret, MPC's global creative director of color grading, was also responsible for completing the trailers, allowing the audience to be immersed in the look and feel of the movie from the preview onwards. Set in 17th century Holland, Tulip Fever is based on the best-selling novel by Deborah Moggach and focuses on the relationship between a rich merchant, his wife and the painter appointed to create her portrait. It was shot on Arri Alexa cameras by cinematographer Eigil Bryld, who wanted the film to have the style of the Dutch Masters. The contrast was developed in Bryld's photography, and then enhanced in post so that the grade evoked natu- ral light, candlelight and sunlight. Jean-Clément Soret had worked with director Justin Chadwick on many occasions, but met Bryld just before the shoot to perform tests on cameras and LUTs. "Eigil wanted to do as much as possible on set," explains Soret. "And he wanted to make sure that what he intended to use was not going to be a problem for me." Soret is a perceptive colorist who knows how to develop and enhance the vision and work of the DP. "Very often the eyes of the actors disap- pear in the photography, and in a movie it is very important to see the eyes because you have to connect immediately," he adds. "So I worked quite a bit tracking the eyes and bringing the details back in. That's what the art of the colorist is — to even out the things that were just not possible to do on set." Challenging scenes that were originally shot for day ended up being used for dusk, too, and this involved extensive reworking tasks to maintain aesthetic flow and continuity. "On some shots we reworked the light adding vignettes and shapes, changed composition, color tempera- ture to keep a continuous flow that was lost in the edit," explains Soret. "Fortunately Baselight offers an intu- itive way of interacting and grading that, to me, has become entirely natural and organic. A trained eye might spot what I have done, but if it's distracting for the audience it means you've missed the point." Baselight (www.filmlight.ltd.uk) speeds up the creative process for Soret by offering automatic tools for tasks that he used to perform manu- ally by hand — such as copying and pasting grades onto different cuts or extending handles. "Rendering and playback are in real time, too," Soret adds. "And if you have too much contrast, you can always work on those edges and bring it into a very filmic color space. I must say, Baselight has amazing features; it's a revolution to work with." Technicolor's London headquar- ters is located in central Soho and has eight Baselight systems. Tulip Fever, which stars Alicia Vikander, Cara Delevingne, Christoph Waltz and Dane DeHaan, was released in the US last month. Tulip Fever TIMBER UNRAVELS WORLD OF FANTASY FOR NEW KELLY CLARKSON MUSIC VIDEO SANTA MONICA, CA — Timber (www. timber.net) recently completed VFX and design on Kelly Clarkson's fantastical new music video, Love So Soft, on Atlantic Records. The Timber team, which recently garnered a VMA Award for "Best Visual Effects" for Kendrick Lamar's music video, Humble, created a stylistic piece that captivates viewers throughout with a whimsical exposition of Kelly Clarkson in various settings, synchronized with the soulful, jazzy notion of the song. The work was headed up by creative directors/partners Jonah Hall and Kevin Lau, with Flame work completed by Chris Decristo, with additional assist from Austin Lewis and Brandon Harden, as well as 3D animation by Jeff Willette, CG com- pleted by Jeff Willette, Eric Pender, Raphael Protti, Eric Zimmerman and Nuke Compositing by Andrew Ashton, Michael Loney, Jason Forster, Eric Almeras, Francesco Panzieri, and Josh Bolin. This original idea was to shoot the video on a stage with a little piece of white shrubbery built. Timber was asked to extend it outward. In return, Timber asked if production could change the approach and shoot the video on a location filled with green crops. By using the plant-life as na- ture's natural green screen, the studio was able to isolate it, discard the green color but use the tone to build a white plant world. "The canaries were a digital flock- ing system we created to emulate the 'murmurations' phenomenon," says Hall. "Take a look at some YouTube reference and you'll see what it is. The train of the dress was created to birth the birds in two of the shots using cloth simulation." Motion control was used here to shoot Clarkson, her singers and some dancers in groups. According to Hall, "This one was really challenging as an organizational exercise rather than a technical one. We knew that the mo- tion control would give us the same camera move, so that wasn't the problem. The issue was having them stand in groups that would allow us to manage the layering as easily as possible in composite, and having the performances broken up into bite size pieces to be sewn together later. Honestly, if the artist was anyone oth- er than Kelly Clarkson, I'm not sure it would have gone as smoothly. She has an amazing knack for being able to do tricky things like singing only portions or singing double speed. That really helped." The team worked with Reel FX to use live explosives to blow up the house. They shot Kelly on a green screen and also shot foreground ele- ments on that same process screen. The main camera on the shoot was a Red at 90fps, while cutaways were captured with a Phantom. According to Hall, "Kelly was able to sing a very complicated part of her very compli- cated song at double speed so we could film her slow but sync the audio. It was really impressive." Hall adds, "All credit for this bit of enhancement goes to my partner in crime Kevin Lau. The original footage was of [Clarkson] and the dancers in a red balloon. The performances were great but the scene needed help. He came up with this really exciting look with a spotlight, light flairs and a deep saturated look. Made the whole sequence really standout." The production company on the video was Freenjoy, was editorial was completed at Whitehouse Post (by editor Nick Gilberg) and color was completed by Dave Hussey at Company 3.